For instance, Mr ‘skh.pcola’ writes: ‘Herr Hitchens is an
anachronism. He would have fit right in the gang with Neville and the
other quislings back in 1939 or so. Idiots that don’t learn from history
doom the rest of us to repeat it. What a misanthropic microencephalitic
moron Hitchens is.’

And I took part (at about 9.30 this morning) in a brief discussion on
BBC Radio 5 Live, in which a listener raged for some time against
Russia and Russians, diagnosing that country as ‘paranoid’(I do not know
what her qualifications were to make this diagnosis).

By contrast, I would urge readers to study an article by Sir Rodric
Braithwaite, the best ambassador this country ever sent to
Moscow, profoundly knowledgeable about Russia, who is also more than
fluent in Russian, and the author of ‘Afgantsy’, a fine study of the
Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, writing in yesterday’s ‘Independent
on Sunday’.